The processing of spreadsheet (alternatively referred to as “worksheet”) information can include operations of opening a spreadsheet file, reading content of cells, performing operations or processing on the content of cells, and saving results of the operations or processing.
One possible unit of organization in a worksheet is the addressable cell. A worksheet may be comprised of a two-dimensional array of cells that are formed into rows and columns, where the position within the row and column provides the address of a cell. A spreadsheet file, or workbook, can contain a plurality of worksheets.
Although cells can contain data that is isolated, i.e., is not related to any other cell, the spreadsheet can also relate information from one cell with that of another. Thus, the processing of spreadsheet data in a normal case involves accessing data from other cells in order to process the data of a particular cell of focus. For large spreadsheets, however, the amount of data may be large, and a significant amount of memory has typically utilized in order to process large spreadsheets.